


Perpetual Motion

by kiiouex



Category: Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, POV Second Person, Persona 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Souji doesn’t need you to be anything, and there are no secrets you need to keep from him. It’s liberating, refreshing, and you fall head-first into his company every time you see him. </p>
<p>Slight AU where the games take place roughly simultaneously and Minato and Souji run across each other in the velvet room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perpetual Motion

**Author's Note:**

> I should admit that I haven't finished P4 yet, so there aren't any spoilers for that ending (because I don't know them >>;; ) I just love protagshipping a lot, so here is my contribution. I hope you enjoy, please let me know if you have any comments or feedback!
> 
> As always, thanks to [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta'ing.

The first time you see him it’s just a glimpse, a flash of silver hair in the instant that it takes the velvet room’s door to open. He’s gone before you can blink, though, and Elizabeth greets you smoothly like nothing was ever out of place.

You don’t think anything of it; trying to understand the velvet room wouldn’t be anything other than a waste of your time, and you always have too much to do as it is.

The next time you get a hint that you aren’t the only one making use of Igor’s services is when you walk in in the middle of the afternoon and see the compendium still open on the table before Igor. You realise it’s not _the_ compendium, but _a_ compendium as Elizabeth quickly sweeps it out of sight, producing your familiar tome and setting that out in its stead. “You have another guest here?” you ask, and you can admit you’re a little curious since your wildcard power was lauded as being unique to you.

“In a manner of speaking,” Elizabeth replies, and there is a definite evasiveness to her response, as though she doesn’t want to uncover the mystery for you. You really don’t care strongly enough to push it, and it slips from your mind.

You catch more hints over the next month, when you walk into the velvet room and catch a faint whiff of gasoline or the fading purr of a motor engine, when Elizabeth seems to have longer hair until you blink and she smiles like nothing has ever been different. It’s still nothing for you to worry about, not while the room still meets your needs, but your curiosity about the other guest does start to increase.

It’s two months after your first glimpse when you finally manage to catch him, opening the door in time to reveal a shocked boy with his hand out as though he’d been reaching for the knob. Silver hair makes him unmistakeable; it’s the rest that’s the surprise. He looks about your age and he’s wearing a school uniform, though the grey certainly isn’t native to Gekkoukan.

He stares at you, and then glances back behind him, seeming shocked at the rumble of the elevator. But understanding flickers across his face easily enough. “So you’re the other guest.”

“Oh my,” Elizabeth says from somewhere behind him, “My apologies. We didn’t intend for the two of you to meet, but it seems you opened the door at just the right time.”

He seems to be waiting for you to say something, but you can’t guess what the appropriate sentiment is; you hope you’re wrong, but you think you can see an eager spark of interest in his eye. “You have the power of the wildcard?” You ask, because even though it’s obvious it gives him the opening he clearly wants.

“I do,” he replies. “I assume you do, too, and – this – is what the velvet room looks like for you?”

You nod. “I’ve gathered yours is some kind of car.”

“A limousine,” he tells you, and there’s a bit of a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. “Your uniform isn’t from around Inaba, is it? Where are you from?”

You tell him, and stay quiet while he starts speculating about how the door to the velvet room takes you both to different spaces, sets you back in such distant locations. The door to Paulwonia mall is still open behind you, but when you step in properly and shut it you don’t doubt that its next destination will depend on who opens it. That’s just how that sort of thing works; magic that’s not worth troubling over. The other wildcard seems to be troubling, though, before he finally snaps to attention, as though he’s realised how long he’s been talking for.

“I’ve been keeping my team waiting,” he says, and smiles at you with a hint of apology. “Sorry for holding you up, too.”

You shrug. You like to take your time picking over the possibilities of the cards, you don’t visit the velvet room when you’re in a rush.

“Maybe I’ll see you here again,” he says, and you’re used to that kind of watery promise, it costs you nothing to nod because it took you two months to run into each other twice, you don’t think the odds are great on another imminent meeting. “I’m Seta Souji, by the way.”

“Arisato Minato,” you tell him, and shake the hand he offered out of politeness. You get a glimpse of an overcast street when he opens the door, and then it’s just you and the velvet’s room attendants once again.

Elizabeth apologises again, trying to explain the nature of the velvet room to you that you boil down to ‘space distortion/magic’, and then you are finally able to get on with fusion like you originally wanted to.

You think about Seta Souji on your way home, and you wonder why he even has a persona let alone the wildcard, and you wonder if there’s a dark hour in Inaba. You ask Mitsuru if she knows of any other persona groups and she admits it’s possible with eyes narrowed in suspicion. She wants to know why you’re asking, and you don’t feel like telling her; the velvet room isn’t exactly a secret, but it makes a distance between you and the others. You don’t feel any imminent need to widen that void by revealing you’re now meeting people through it.

She lets you drop it, and you head to Tartarus with your newly-fused persona, and you put Seta Souji out of your mind.

It is not with wholly conscious intent that you are visiting the velvet room at the same time on the same day, one week later. It’s just that it’s the one afternoon you don’t have any sports or cultural obligations, and you’ve grown stronger in Tartarus but don’t want to waste the dark hour while you play at the divination of demons. It is simply the most convenient chance you have to visit Igor, and you tell yourself the odds of running into Souji again are no higher than they were a week ago.

You can’t even pretend to be surprised when you see him again. The door opens into a limousine, as it is apparently your turn to visit his version of the room. Igor is just clearing the cards from the table when you arrive and Souji looks back over his shoulder, smiling that little flicker smile he has. “Minato,” he greets, sounding actually happy to see you. “I was wondering if I’d run into you again.”

You just nod. You will never stop being surprised by how much other people seem to enjoy your company, and you’re not sure if you have a place in the limousine’s plush-blue interior. A woman who looks a lot like Elizabeth but isn’t bows her head in greeting to you, and you nod to her as well, still lingering by the door.

Souji pushes away from the low table, thanking Igor briefly, and bending so as to not hit his head on the limousine’s roof. You would say that you definitely got the better room, by space alone, though you do like the flashes of streetlights as the car moves down whatever endless road it’s set on. Souji settles down on one of the plush seats near the door and if you are willing to be honest with yourself then you are not above admitting that you allocated extra time in case he wanted to talk.

You sit opposite him, taking your second chance to appraise him; there’s more strength in his broad shoulders than yours, the gleam of quiet intelligence in his eye, the callouses on his fingers hard-won signs of his training. Whatever trials he’s facing, he seems serious about them.

“I have some questions for you, actually,” he says, “I hope you don’t mind. But in Inaba, the midnight channel has only ever had local victims; what does it show in Iwatodai?”

“The midnight channel?” You repeat coolly, raising your eyebrows as a question.

He stares a little, as though he hadn’t considered that you wouldn’t know. More slowly, he asks, “Have you ever been to the world inside the televisions?”

There is so much in that one sentence that you don’t understand that you don’t even try to unpack it. Instead, you tell him, “Every night at midnight, the dark hour comes, and we climb the tower of Tartarus that emerges out of our school.” There is a chance that you might be sharing confidential information, but you assume it doesn’t matter if he’s a persona user, and from so far away, and if he’s staring at you like you’re insane anyway. You do your best not to sound insincere as you ask, “You don’t have that?”

It’s good that you budgeted time because it takes the two of you awhile to hash out the similarities and differences between you. Your missions are as disparate as your velvet rooms, and the two of you can’t find a single link between you besides the existence of personas – and shadows. But at least in Inaba, they seem safely contained in the television. The implications of _that_ are pretty far beyond you, and it’s not something you want to bring up to SEES. The full moon shadows are keeping you busy enough without trying to eradicate them from a second world as well.

You mind Souji’s company less than you thought you would. He seems to share your sense of humour, and you find that when he’s finally due to head back home, you’re wearing the same subtle smile as he is. You drop it as soon as you realise, and you bid Souji farewell, and you have far less time to adjust your personas than you intended. You don’t mind, though.

You don’t mention him to SEES when you return to the dorm, you don’t want to trouble them with the knowledge of the shadows in Inaba when they seem so unrelated to the Kirijo group’s work. You’ll find out later if that’s a bad decision. In the meantime, you go to bed early, touch your fingers to the unyielding glass of your television screen, and wonder if he’s staying up in Inaba trying to find the missing seconds on the stroke of midnight.

He’s there at the same time next week, and he smiles when he sees you, and he talks to you for an hour about fusion strategies, a conversation you greatly appreciate. It’s not something the rest of your group needs to worry about, and he teaches you the trick for creating a Valkyrie with Tarujaka while you fix a few gaps in his knowledge about inheritance rules.

“The others think it’s strange,” he tells you, “That there are so many facets of me in so many different demons. They all change depending on their situations, but I suppose they don’t embrace it so much, the idea that you can be a different person to everyone you meet.”

You think you understand, and you actually do tell him that you understand, and you earn yourself another smile.

The week after that finds you both in your elevator, and your meeting time is unofficially but firmly set. You trade him a land badge for a life ring, and he tells you about the latest rescue he’s attempting in the television world, and you tell him about apathy syndrome as it sweeps Port Island, and you part after an hour.

The week after that, you spend three hours in the back of the limousine comparing hobbies and interests and friends and family, trying to find the common thread that gave you both the wildcard. You don’t really find one, but you learn a lot about him, and you divulge more about yourself in one sitting than you ever have before, and you don’t _mind_ , the strangest part of all. He’s so quiet and easy-going, relaxing to be near, and you thought you were resistant to that kind of thing but you’re lingering in his company anyway. He’s having the effect on you that you seem to have on other people, and as soon as you think that you know you’ve found that thread.

You don’t tell him. If he’s really that like you, he’ll know it too.

It becomes familiar, routine, and you start spending your Monday nights working on fusion so you can spend your Friday afternoons with him and not worry about all the wasted hours. Time is always slipping past you, a steady beat too fast for you to count, and Souji’s slot in your schedule is the one you anticipate the most. For every other person in your life, you need to hold something back; your school friends can’t know of SEES, your dorm mates need you as a leader and a warrior and not always as a human.

Souji doesn’t need you as anything, and there are no secrets you need to keep from him. It’s liberating, refreshing, and you fall head-first into his company every time you see him. He is the one person you recount the story of how you met Fuuka to, he is there when you speculate very quietly about Strega, he helps you talk through the revelations about the Kirijo group, enjoys hearing about everyone else you’ve made a connection with.

When Shinjiro dies, you talk to Souji. You didn’t want to voice your real feelings to SEES; that you feel the loss of an ally in battle more than that of a friend. That you haven’t ever really feared death, for yourself or anyone else. You couldn’t say it to your grieving dorm mates, and you know Souji doesn’t quite understand you from the way he watches you with narrowed eyes. But he listens.

“I suppose you’ve been desensitized,” he says, “Since you lost your parents so young.”

You don’t disagree with him, but you just shrug. “It’s not like I don’t miss him,” you say, looking at the soft carpet of the limousine’s floor. “I notice his absence. He made the others happier. I just… don’t feel it the way they do.”

His hand finds yours, his palm warm as he squeezes your fingers and you suppose it’s reassuring. When he doesn’t move his hand away, you don’t ask him to, just feel the warmth and wonder.

He’s the one that gets the idea to spar first, and you’re used to indulging him by then. You ask Elizabeth if she and Igor mind stepping back so you can use the space of the elevator, and they’re gone when you blink, table cleared with them.

Souji thinks it is a little bit incredible that you can use multiple weapons with competence, but you switch your spear out for a longsword in the interest of a fair fight. You both toss your blazers aside, roll up your sleeves, face each other down – and you’ve always been at a similar power level, you wonder if that will still hold up – and you start.

You dart in first, quick but not overpowering, and he can parry all your fast little strikes while you search for an opening to jab him in. He blocks one of your swings and counters, pushing back too hard and throwing off your timing, and his superior strength carries through in his blade, coming down hard on your own as you barely raise it in time.

You’re a more even match than you expected and despite a dozen near misses neither of you takes more than a minor scratch though you both dance around each other until you’re panting and sweating, barely able to stand unaided.

“How about we call that a draw?” Souji asks, with as wry a grin as he can manage through his heavy gasps.

You’re glad to agree, setting your sword down and lowering yourself to the floor. He mirrors you, collapsing beside you, still smiling. He’s always smiling at you, always glad to see you, always acts like your company is as dear to him as he is to you. Even sweaty and defeated he still feels like a comfort.

You don’t know who kissed who first but you think you reached for each other at the same time. Still breathless from the fight, you take the only chance you might get to be alone in the velvet room, and you savour the feeling of his mouth on yours, on the warmth and the compassion he absolutely radiates to you, of how absolutely easy it is to let your hands rest on his shoulders and fall against him and not think about a single other thing.  

It’s dark out when you leave the velvet room. Fuuka worried about how late you came home, Akihiko spots your new cuts, Junpei sees how rumpled your shirt is, and all of them are curious as to what you’ve been _doing_. You tell them you were with a friend. You have to decline when they ask you to Tartarus; even aside from how tired you are, you forgot to fuse the new persona you need.

You see Souji every week, except for when you both have exams – and the weeks coincide, at least – even as the year comes to a close and you’re both getting tired, both getting stressed. The shadows in each of your worlds are too strong, there’s no room for mistakes, the stakes of your missions won’t seem to stop mounting. The afternoons you spend with your head on his shoulder while he talks about Nanako or his friends or other desperate distractions are what get you through.

You find out that everything is going to come to an end.

You don’t tell him.

January passes too fast, but hazy as you slowly disconnect from the world, and if he can tell that there’s something wrong with you, you hope he’s chalking it up to stress and fear and the oncoming disasters. He asks you a couple of times if you’ve learned any more about the origin of your shadows, and he asks you once what Ryoji’s been up to. You ask him to tell you about Inaba instead, and he gives you only a vague reply. You think there’s a lot he’s not telling you, too. You talk less, and hold his hand tight, and kiss him whenever Elizabeth or Margaret very loudly ask Igor to help them with something at the back of the room.

On January 30th, you think about leaving him a letter, but don’t.

On January 31st, you do not die. Not immediately.

You don’t tell him.

The day before graduation, you return to the velvet room. It’s the day before your usual meeting, and you don’t expect to run into him but you can hope all the same. He’s not there, and there’s a dull ache in your chest that you don’t want to analyse. You weren’t expecting to see him, anyway; you came to leave him a gift. You’re not sure if it will help him, awaken any strength for him, but it feels like the right thing to do. You ask Elizabeth to wrap everything up for you; Akinari’s notebook, Kenji’s choker, Kazushi’s tape and everything else you’ve been given, all your memories and friendships, experiences and love, neatly packaged in midnight blue paper. Elizabeth promises you solemnly that she will ensure it reaches his hands, and she demands the human gesture of a ‘farewell hug’, her slender arms wrapping tight around your shoulders. You feel her shaking, and hug her back.

You thank her and Igor for their help, and you leave. You open the door slowly, hoping to see a flash of silver hair in that brief burst of light, but he doesn’t arrive. Too bad, you think. Poor timing. Nothing to be done for it. It is the ending of the intersection between Inaba and Iwatodai, and you shut the door to the velvet room behind you for the last time.

The next day, you hope he got your gift and he likes it, and you hope his mission ends as successfully as yours did. You hope he enjoys the life you’ve protected for him.

You graduate.

You think you can feel him, just a flicker of that warm comforting presence, for a single second as you close your eyes.


End file.
